#compare contrast

[vintage-tech]

We are not the same: Apples branded "Yakima Chief" from the 1930s (Washington Dehydrating) and 2020s (Borton).

[nefelibatat]

So if I were to take away from this moment something deeper than “man Sevika's a freak”, I'd point out that we've seen the same tactic not long before.

What does this say about Caitlyn? She's fighting dirty. She's fighting like a cornered rat. She's fighting like a Zaunite.

And first of all there's hypocrisy. Caitlyn's been calling these people animals and monsters and whatnot but when placed in an identical situation she responds identically. Case in point: getting so mad at Jinx for terrorizing people out of grief that she goes ahead and starts to terrorize people out of grief. Sevika's expression afterwards is mostly “joke's on you I'm into that” but there's some surprise there too — you wouldn't expect that move from a Piltie.

Then there's desperation. Because she needs revenge; she needs it or she'll never ever forgive herself for what happened. So she'll throw away her morals and her dignity and just do whatever it takes to achieve the goal, whether it means chomping on someone like a feral raccoon or becoming a military dictator… which puts her in the same mindset as Zaunites, all of whom are desperate to survive and a lot of whom could never afford morals and dignity in the first place.

[canisalbus]

Happy birthday 🎂

Here's a little drawing of Machete (but I forgot to look up a reference for his clothes) :)

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[trashcansienna]

lol, lmao even. Decided to draw Leshy and my yellow cat design

[welcometogrouchland]

I have a LOTT of sketches I could post rn but these 2 are recent and I'm fond of them <3 Steph costume ideas and Tim/Damian cringe bickering inspired by Batman: Brave and the Bold #18!

[hyunpic]

december 2024 with hyunjin

[elodieunderglass]

Self-indulgently turning over some thoughts about “comparing apples and hand grenades”

[eveningdawn222]

people who act like batman isn't "judge jury and executioner" because he doesn't kill people are like. genuinely so funny to me because. they're very obviously thinking of "executioner" as like. the stereotypical guy with axe who chops people heads off, and not, yknow, the literal definition of the idiom itself, which is about someone who has the ability to judge and then subsequently punish someone unilaterally. which is quite literally what batman does.

he has the ability to decide what is a "crime" to him, he is the one who decides whether people are guilty of those crimes, and he is the one who executes their punishment. the severity of the punishment doesn't matter - he is unaccountable to anyone else, and indeed is allowed to commit as many crimes as needed to reach his arbitrary ideal of "justice."

the ideal of batman is this: a man who is so fundamentally changed by an act of senseless violence that he takes it upon himself to fight back against the rot and corruption in the world. he does this not through political activism, not through ridding himself of his wealth in favor of a greater good, not through community outreach, but through an individualistic fantasy of being a hero.

and you'll say: charlie, but he does do that !!! he donates his money all the time, he funds social programs, hospitals, orphanages, gets people jobs -

and i will say this: so why don't things get better?

because here's the base of it. gotham, at its core, can't get better. no matter what bruce wayne does, there will always be more crime, more villains, more death, more people for batman to beat up in back alleys. because that's what sells.

reoffending rates don't matter in gotham, prison reform doesn't matter in gotham, what actually causes crime doesn't matter in gotham because that doesn't sell books.

and so here it is; dc has unintentionally created a world where batman can't win, but can't be wrong, and where thousands of nameless, faceless, only-created-to-die civilians must be pushed into the meat grinder that is gotham, to fuel bruce wayne's angst and vindicate his constant, tireless, noble fight against the forces of evil.

and then: a new robin, who is poor and who's parents are dead or gone because of this cycle; who is happy go-lucky and hated by editors and fans for being robin, for not being dick grayson, for being poor.

and this robin is written, unintentionally or not, to be angry at the ways in which batman's (the narrative's) idea of justice is detached from its victims. bruce seems perfectly fine to allow countless unnamed women to be at risk from garzonas in his home country, yet robin is the one who is portrayed as irrational and violent.

this robin is not detached from gotham in the way bruce wayne is: this robin is a product of gotham.

(and here's the thing. you can't punch aids. you can't fight a disease with colorful fights and nifty gadgets. and how would robin dying from aids add to batman's story; it would call into question the systemic changes that haven't been made in gotham. how does a child get aids, in batman's city?)

so robin dies, and then bruce (the narrative) spends the next couple of decades blaming it on him. it is jason's fault; he was reckless, he just ran in, he thought it was all a game. if only bruce had seen what was coming, if only he could have known that jason wasn't rich enough or smart enough or liked enough to be robin.

batman gets a little more violent, a little more self destructive. he hurts people more and almost (!!) kills a couple guys. this is bad because it's self destructive and "not who he is." it is not bad because batman should not be able to just beat people up when he's angry.

and then he gets a shiny new robin - who is all the things jason "wasn't": rich and smart and rational and he doesn't put who batman is into question. batman and robin are partners, and jason is a grave and a cautionary tale, and (crucially here) never right.

the joker kills thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be killed.

batman beats up thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be criminals.

and then jason comes back, and nothing has changed. there is a batman and a (shiny! rich!) robin and the joker kills thousands. (because it sells)

and jason is angry - he has been left unavenged - his death has meant nothing, just as willis' had, just as catherine's had, just as gloria's had, just as -

thousands. ten of thousands. hundreds of thousands. written to be killed.

but one of them gets to come back.

and he is angry - not only at the joker, but at bruce (the narrative) - because why is the joker still alive (when thousands-)

here is the thing - jason todd is right. not because the death penalty is good, not because criminals deserve to die, not because of everything he says -

but because of what he calls into question. why is the joker alive?

because he sells books.

and dc has written a masterful character, through no fault of their own, because jason knows what is wrong, and he knows who is at fault - batman. (the narrative)

so the argument that bruce can't kill because he's not judge jury and executioner; the argument that jason is a cop or that jason is insane or that jason is in the wrong here; they hold no weight.

batman can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.

and jason can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.

so he will beg and plead and grovel - he will betray everything that is himself, he will forsake his family and his city and kill himself - just so that bruce (the narrative) will let the joker die.

he was condemned to death by an audience, and after he came back he has spent his whole life looking us in the eyes and screaming, asking, pleading; why is the joker still alive?

why are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands (the number doesn't matter, see, because they're just a number. not people. not real.) why are we expendable for his story? why did i have to die just for nothing to change?

and the answer is money. and the answer is the batman can never be wrong. and the answer is shitty writing. and the answer is -

nothing jason can ever change.

which is the worst of it all. he is a victim with no power, and no one else in the world can see it. he is raging and crying and screaming at his father and his writers and you - and it doesn't matter. jason doesn't matter. and he knows it.

[hinamie]

sidelong

[aceredshirt13]

if there's one thing about classic literary detectives it's that they are not conventionally attractive. doyle told sidney paget to stop drawing holmes so pretty. christie was like "let me introduce you to this short pudgy balding man who is retirement age and i hate him." sayers compares wimsey to maggots on literally the FIRST PAGE

i love it. i love them. stop casting hot people in these roles. we need our detectives to be Charmingly Weird-Looking

[jakkenpoy]

[mayasaura]

It kind of confuses me when I see people talking about cavaliers as if the Nine Houses have established and normalised some radical social role of human sacrifice. It really doesn't seem to me like the role of a cavalier is that simple. The only members of their society we've seen who weren't horrified by the idea were the Tridentarii.

The career soldier, who was born into the military class and trained for that role since birth, believes no necromancer should ever have to see their cavalier die. The other child soldier was killed while putting himself between his cavalier and danger. The heirophant of the Emperor's law who draws on his cavalier like a battery—a level of exploitation the other Houses condemn—turns against the will of his God when he witnesses the sacrifice expected for lyctorhood.

The deliberate sacrifice of a cavalier is not normalised. Not even in the front lines of their military. The role of a cavalier is exploitative, of course, and that's where the interesting part begins. Is it any more exploitative than a king whose knights are trained to die in battle? Than employees who are forced to work or starve? Than the existence of a noble class, or capitalism?

Human suffering exists in any society, and in most societies I know of, much of that suffering we inflict on one another through exploitation. The Nine Houses are not unique in this respect. I am very much in awe of the worldbuilding in this series, tho, that it has managed to defamiliarise human suffering and class dynamics as to show us their grotesquerie plainly without ever tipping over into anything as straight forward as direct allegory.

[invinciblerodent]

Ngl, some people's "I wasn't allowed to be an irredeemably evil shitbird, ergo Veilguard is not an RPG" argument is extra funny to me, because I don't actually think there is a conceivable narrative in which, if your Rook did something as objectively amoral as selling people into slavery, they wouldn't wake up the next morning floating untethered in the raw Fade with Neve's bootprint on their ass, and the Lighthouse no more than a distant blip on the edge of their vision.

Like there is a lot to get into here that I just don't have the time or the spoons to go through, but I'd argue that one of the biggest strengths of Veilguard's writing is that the main cast are all very well-defined characters with their own sets of morals, ethics, and goals, and they collectively have more than enough of a backbone that if Rook did something that proved them incapable of leading the team to the story's climax and/or proved them to be of no benefit to them, they wouldn't fail their quest: they would just swiftly and efficiently get rid of Rook.

[xinyuehui]

I want to be with you...till death do us apart.

[frownyalfred]

Batman: I don’t kill. It’s wrong.

Batman three minutes later putting on spiked brass knuckles: anyway did I ever tell you about how Superman is a much better person than me?

[sparrowlucero]

do you actually dislike the bird abode or just the creature designs? not saying the name directly so your ass doesn't get blasted by the tag

I like a lot of the creatures in it; the showrunner is a really fantastic horror artist and it really comes through in the aesthetics of the show. I especially like this hand dragon, though there's a lot of other great designs:

As for the show on the whole, it's not bad but not really for me? Early on it really feels like it's schtick will be that it's a subversion of harry potter-esque stories, where the protagonist wants to go on an adventure similar to her favorite fantasy book but instead ends up hanging out with the "villain" (who's actually just othered)/the magic school turns out to be secretly oppressive/the world is kind of gross and spooky instead of clean and approachable... but as it goes along I think it ends up being a pretty by the books YA fantasy thing played mostly straight, and it isn't super interesting or funny or scary or anything besides that. Which admittedly was probably to its benefit, I think a lot of its popularity comes from it being this very tropeish and not-uncomfortable magic school/found family story that's actually queer, like I genuinely think this is hugely appealing to the average cartoon fan on twitter, but I'm just not personally into it in comparison to a lot of it's contemporaries